Arduino - one button random stereo play

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello
I was hoping someone might have some clever suggestions and thoughts outside the box!

As part of a larger project, I'm looking to create a one or two button stereo player - on/off and shuffle. The obvious answer would be using an mp3 shield but this gets pricey as based on what I'm already getting my arduino to do, I'd need another arduino and the shield as well as a small amp and speakers.

I'm just thinking if it is possible to use the arduino with a relay to turn on something like a cheap MP3 player set in auto play random or a car stereo or such. It sounds like it would work in theory but I'd need to know specifically which devices auto play in random....or other ideas that may work.

Chris

2

These guys usually have $10 or so MP3 modules that you can easily control, all will play up to 99 or maybe 199 tracks from SD card.
http://www.mdfly.com/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&zenid=c35ecbf0b789e4efff9a3f55b91dfb28&keyword=mp3&x=-310&y=-103
Not sure why all the pricing is "contact us" at the moment.
Use with some powered computer speakers, most everyone has some around.

3

Hi Crossroads, they are apparently closed until 9th September. Also they are in the USA and I'm UK which is my problem - I can't seem to source a reasonably priced shield.

4

Sept 9? 2 Weeks off, not too unreasonable.
I have several of theirs, have only tried one or two and they did seem easy to use.
They indicate currency is GB Pounds, so I guess they would ship to UK.
Ask them to send in a padded envelope, maybe $10 via USPS.

5

If you go to ebay, you will find several Chinese sellers offering VS1053 boards. From the pictures, it looks like there are 5 main styles:

  • Just the chip for soldering
  • A board with a single 3.5mm port, presumably for speakers, and an onboard microphone
  • A board with two 3.5mm ports, for speaker and microphone input
  • A board with two 3.5mm ports and a micro sd card
  • An Uno shield, complete with two 3.5mm ports and a micro sd card

There are 2 US based sellers, which might avoid the China epacket wait times. Here is the US seller I've bought other things from: http://www.ebay.com/itm/MP3-Music-VS1053-shield-board-with-TF-card-slot-work-with-arduino-/321157017822?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ac67330de

They do offer shipping to the UK, and there a faster shipping method available (if you don't mind paying $23 US for shipping a $19 US item). In looking at the listing, it says you need a Mega to do the recording action.

6

I use a arduino nano/w and a vs1003 plus SD module implemented a mp3 player. The total cost is 38(nano)+vs1003(45)+SD module(3) = 86RMB, which equals to around $16.

I use SFEMP3Shield library for mp3 playing, SdFat for SD filesystem(support FAT16 and FAT32), while the ino file is written by myself, you can get it on my github repository(https://github.com/feipyang/arduinomp3). The sketch is under developing, but the current version could finish the following things:

  1. Automatically scan the who SD card to list all of *.mp3 files, then generate the PlayList. When adding new files or changing directory structures, the scan will automatically be detected and run.
  2. Randomly play the mp3 files.
  3. Switch to next one by input "n" in serial window.
  4. Increase and decrease the volume.
  5. Display the Mp3 ID tags.
  6. Pause the playing.
  7. Jump to some timestamp.

More functionality are under developing.

The whole image takes around 25000 of total 30720 bytes flash.

If you want to do "one button random play", simply replace the serial input 'n'(next song command) into your button-click event could satisfied your requirement.